Singed
by Echostrike
Summary: See, I draw Portal 1 GLaDOS with long hair, and Portal 2 GLaDOS with short hair. Figured I'd make a backstory for it - just a (very) little one-shot that takes place at the boss battle of Portal 1. It kind of evolved into a metaphorical...thing. Mild violence. Cover image made in Paint Tool SAI.


"Your entire life has been a mathematical error. A mathematical error I'm about to correct." GLaDOS yelled at the test subject, a second after she'd dropped a core into the Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator.

She spasmed slightly, her long hair falling dismally and flat on her shoulders, feeling physical pain as the core died. It was a part of her, and it felt like her heart was being torn away when it burned. The test subject barely glanced at her, ignoring her pain.

 _Is that all I am? A robot? I'm sentient. I have feelings. If anything...you're the one who doesn't have them. I'm more human than you. I feel pain...and the lasting echoes of it -_

 _This is not the time for poetry,_ she told herself crossly.

The neurotoxin was becoming thicker in the air, GLaDOS could sense. There was only about a minute, two at most, before the little pest would die. Then, GLaDOS would be at peace again. Find someone more willing, but just as determined...

The test subject's eyes were riveted on the rocket turret that now focused its laser on her. It fired - and the test subject stepped aside, avoiding it. It headed straight through the portal.

GLaDOS pulled at the cords, ducking miserably, listening to the rocket whistle as it raced towards her. She had little area to move on the stairway platform. It exploded a second after, right above her head, and tongues of flame reached down. _Turn off the rockets,_ she cried out to the facility. _It hurts. Stop it - manual override! Shut down the rockets!_

The facility could not help her. The core that allowed her to control her world, to want to save someone's life, was burning. The incinerator was turning her to ashes, piece by piece.

 _The bell invites..._

GLaDOS shuddered, curling up on the stairway platform, shielding herself. Another core dropped to the ground. The subject promptly picked it up.

 _Hear the turret, for it is knell..._

She still had neurotoxin, right? So the test subject would die too.

 _That summons us to heaven..._

GLaDOS stood shakily, glancing down at herself, about to scream another verbal attack. She stopped dead. Long, dark filaments were falling, burning around her. She caught a small clump of them, crumbling them to ashes, and stared.

 _or to hell._

Her other hand simultaneously reaching up to brush the hair across her ear. It was short, singed at the edges. Her hand froze. The rocket has blown it away.

 _The reaper came today._

GLaDOS narrowed her eyes, not noticing the tears streaming down her face from the static shock of another core burning away, its intertwined connection with her own mind severed. The world blurred, the noise of explosions faded.

Gravity seemed to reverse. Massive torrents of air streaming up in an explosion she could only assume had come from herself buffeted her skyward, to the surface.

As she floated up, she glanced back down, her tears falling as her mainframe fell apart and her lab coat burned. GLaDOS stared into the test subject's cold blue eyes as they fell up together, jaw firm and teeth gritted. Even now, she was silent.

 _"There really was a cake,"_ GLaDOS whispered, reaching out to her, and blacked out, falling back down to the hard asphalt, burning on the sun-baked parking lot. In her last moment, she called out to the dying mainframe of the facility, lost without her. One last order.

Bring her back, she sent. bring her back to me.

Her thoughts quieted to a murmur, and her eyes fading to a dull, flat color.

She sang to herself and the test subject in her sleep, trying so, so hard to wake up from the endless nightmare of her own destruction, two minutes looped and looped and looped, forever and ever, both alive and dead…

until somebody opens the box.

* * *

 **A/N: Um yeah this started out as kind of just explaining why in my humanized designs GLaDOS' hair is shorter in my Portal 2 version /D**

 **i think i lost the plot**

 **feeling really metaphorical right now**

 **maybe it's because I have to animate to a song that has like thREEE NEARLY IDENTICAL VERSES AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO**

 **HELPP MEEEEE**

 **/**

 **Anyway I really love GLaDOS and I think in Portal 1 she's confused and feels very abused by the scientists. Since they were human, she thinks all humans are cruel, and that's only reinforced by Chell trying to get out. GLaDOS is blinded by her prejudice against humans, and her programmed obsession with Science, so she doesn't see how reasonable Chell's wants are. ((Heck, maybe she's just hungry.)) I kind of wanted to portray her as a sort of younger, naive person inside, so I get that this is kind of out of character. Then in Portal 2 she's grown up a lot and had time to think about exactly what mistakes she made at first (Well, maybe not completely. After all, she did end up in a potato.), and decides to be calmer.**

 **Once as a punishment I had to get my hair cut. I ended up crying because I really missed it. So this is kind of _me._ Except GLaDOS. I don't really know /D**

 **poetry is excerpts from Doug Rattman's scribblings and Lab Rat wooo**


End file.
